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Kat claimed that she and the family
were working shifts. This was a lie. The
family wandered in and out through
the day. Kat went nowhere, sitting on
the bed, feeling Jenn’s skin, placing ice
packs, requesting acetaminophen suppositories
to bring down Jenn’s fever.
My resident told her this morning
to go home for a while, get a shower, a
change of clothes. Eat something. “Don’t
feel guilty,” he’d told her. And she left.
During her absence, I thought I’d
take a break, too. Jenn was clinging to
the status quo. I thought she’d make it
through the weekend. I went to the cafeteria
to get a soda. My pager went off
about that time.
Jenn’s brother and niece were sitting
next to the bed. The television was off,
the sun beat down on the window. It
made me think it was warm outside
when really, it was just a cool 60 degrees
with some incidental sunlight here and
there. Jenn’s face was grey, her hands
still warm. I placed my stethoscope
over her chest and watched the clock.
The silence in her chest was eerie. The
Owl, symbol of Athens, reverse of
a silver tetradrachm from Athens. © Corbis.
sixty seconds were long and made me
very aware of the pain in my back from
bending over. Kat hadn’t made it back
yet, but she had just called. It was one
o’clock.
“Is she gone?” She asked Jenn’s niece
without being prompted.
“She’s in heaven now,” her niece
whispered as we performed our rituals.
Maybe it brought her some comfort to
say that.
I Googled her name until her obituary
was finally posted. It took the family
over a week to put her in the ground.
Until that time, I knew that Kat must
have been surrounded by Jenn’s family
coming in and out, strangers sending
things like flowers and meat trays. I
decided I would give her a call a couple
days after the funeral. I know from
my own experience that that’s when
the mourning will start—when the
crowds quiet down, and Kat is left to
pick through Jenn’s closet, sleep in the
sheets that smell like her, throw out
the pill bottles that litter her cabinets,
dispose of the relics that documented
the presence of her and the life they’d
built together. She’d be stuck wondering
if she should dispose of everything that
made the longing burn fresh or worry
about whether it would make her forget
something sacred about them. An old
shirt, a matchbook, a used pencil, a half
eaten sandwich. She’d want to reach out
to someone to help her decide what to
keep and realize that her habit for years
now was to reach for Jenn.
“I just wanted you to know that your
relationship is really inspiring.” This was
a couple hours before Jenn’s death when
I found Kat in the room by herself. She
cried. I think it was something that had
built up for a while, and now she just
couldn’t control it.
“Twelve years is just not enough,” she
said, sniffing and shaking her sore, red
face, “but, you know, fifty wouldn’t have
been enough.”
The author’s address is:
4249 West Sarah Street
Burbank, California 91505
E-mail: susielisa@gmail.com
Musings on an Attic Tetradrachm
What hands are these that stamped wide-eyed
Owls on rounds of Laurian silver,
And whose knives are those who carved
Humanity on blocks of solid stone?
What artist’s brush has painted antic
Nymphs on urns of reddened clay,
And whose minds are they who plumbed
So deep within the human soul?
Whose book is this which tells such tales of
Bloody death on ancient Trojan shores,
What princely youth has led his men
To trample vast miles of Asian soil?
And which men with their lines and angles
First measured the circumference of the Earth?
Now seek ye out the Olympian gods,
And as the Delphic Sybil nods,
Athena’s owl will tell you Who
Alvin J. Cummins, MD
Dr. Cummins (AΩA, Johns Hopkins University, 1944) is retired as professor of Medicine at the
University of Tennesseee Center for the Health Sciences in Memphis. His address is: 13114 Brooks
Landing Place, Carmel, Indiana 46033. E-mail: nero6@aol.com.
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